Overland Storage bags Barrall

Overland Storage has appointed Geoff Barrall to an executive officer's position according to a financial filing.

A Form D SEC document, referring to a "Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities" was filed on 2 March. It mentions several existing board directors and executive officers, such as CEO Eric Kelly, and includes Geoff Barrall in the list. The form refers to a sale of equity in the company on 22 February.

The parties listed in the document appear to have invested in the offering, one which netted Overland $12m and enabled it to escape a Nasdaq expulsion through having insufficient market capitalisation.

Barrall founded BlueArc, the supplier of hardware-accelerated NAS storage arrays, and then moved on to found Drobo, the supplier of very snazzy and easy-to-use small external data protection products.

He abruptly left Drobo in December 2009, with Tom Buiocchi taking over. We can assume Barrall is as rich as Croesus and doesn't need to ever work again, so something must have really tickled his fancy at Overland.

Overland hasn't announced anything yet so we await the details, but this could be another coup for Eric Kelly under whose reign Overland is creeping back from the brink of self-created destruction and beginning to take giant steps forward. With Barrall's BlueArc and Drobo background, we can expect some fireworks. ®